the fundamental food in many parts of the world, so much so that the word ‘bread’ is often equivalent to ‘food’, and by extension, in 20th-century English vernacular, to ‘money’. Christians who recite the Lord's Prayer ask for their ‘daily bread’, and Anglo-Saxons called their lords hlafward (loaf guardian) and their ladies hlaefdige (loaf kneader). But bread is by no means the universal staple; in parts of Asia there is a corresponding equivalence between ‘rice’ and ‘food’.
Bread's place in the scheme of human survival has ensured its role in religion, magic, and custom. Hence the breaking and blessing of bread that is central to meal-taking in Orthodox Jewish custom; the extension of this rite to the Christian Eucharist; the loading onto bread of countless superstitions and customary rituals, from the hanging of a loaf in the house on Good Friday to ward off evil spirits, the cutting of a cross on loaves ‘to let the Devil out’, to eating buns marked with a cross at Easter (but the cross has symbolism older than Christianity, and cutting a loaf this way may reflect other customs, such as sun or fire worship, fertility rites, or the ritual division of a loaf into portions).
Bread is a deceptively simple foodstuff that required technological progress in various fields: an agriculture capable of raising gluten-rich cereals; a technique for converting grain into flour, i.e. milling; a method of imparting lightness to a dough by way of leavening; a means of cooking more complex than a flat stone on a fire. Until these were in place, societies had to be satisfied with gruels and pottages, or at best some form of pancake or wafer.
It is no chance that bread is the staple of Europe, W. Asia, and the Near East. The cereals which grow naturally in these regions include those whose composition—including especially gluten—is such that they can form a cohesive loaf. The best in this respect is wheat and its predecessors emmer, spelt, and einkorn, which contain the most gluten, followed by rye and barley. (Others such as millet and oats, though lacking gluten, can still be pushed together into dense cakes. In contrast, rice, the staple of E. Asia, is unsuited to bread-making.)
It is commonly believed that the domestication of the predecessors of wheat began in the region of Anatolia, Iran, and Syria before 7000 bc, and that this represented the start of settled agriculture and the development of cereal crops and, in consequence, bread.
The flour which is needed for bread-making has to be produced by some sort of grinding. Use of a pestle and mortar is the most primitive means, but normally produces a coarse grind which is more suited to porridges and gruels than bread. The next step up is to organize two stones to grind against each other. The saddle quern, beloved of archaeologists, provides the first example.
As explained in the entry on flour, this domestic device led to others, the harnessing of water power in classical Rome, and the adoption of wind power from about ad 1000. However, the principle remained the same and the grinding had to be followed by sieving or bolting, until the 19th century when something quite new emerged: the efficient, fast roller mill, first tried in Hungary in the 1820s, perfected in Switzerland in 1834, and then quickly adopted all over Europe and America. Its multiple steel rollers not only ground the grain, but also separated the various fractions (bran, germ, endosperm) without the need for bolting. For the first time, truly white flour was available at a low price.
The third essential for a risen loaf was a gas-forming agent or leaven. The discovery of this has been credited to the Egyptians. It was probably by accident when a batch of dough became infected by the wild yeast spores which float in the air everywhere. If, for reasons of economy, the apparently spoilt, rotten dough was baked anyway, it would have been realized that the bread was lighter and had a special, good flavour. Later came the discovery that a piece of leavened dough could be kept to spread the infection to the next batch. Egyptian leavened and unleavened bread of various shapes and sizes has been found, preserved by the dry desert sand. An inscription of the 20th dynasty lists 30 different kinds of bread. From 2000 bc or earlier there were professional bakers.
When the Israelites fled from Egypt in the Exodus they left their leaven behind. (In contrast, the more provident prospectors of the American west carried their cultures with them; hence San Francisco sourdoughs.) The Israelites thereafter had to exist on unleavened bread (Exodus 12: 34–9). This was the origin of the Passover bread matzo. But unleavened bread continued in use in many societies. The Romans, especially old-fashioned ones in the early days of the Empire, felt that it was traditional, correct, and healthy, the newfangled leavened doughs being an import from luxurious Greece.
Ultimately, the Romans did borrow the use of ale-barm or brewers' yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae, used to make beer and wine, now replaced by varieties of distillers' yeast), from subjected Germanic tribes. This was a means of leavening also known to Celts in Spain. If the original Egyptian leaven was a combination of spontaneous lactic fermentation of flour and water with assistance perhaps from soured milk and further reinforcement from the spores of wild, airborne yeast, brewers' yeast induced an alcoholic fermentation, and was more predictable. The breads of some societies have relied mainly on lactic fermentation—which is the base of the whole family of sourdoughs—while others, especially the British Isles, have long depended on straight alcoholic fermentations using brewers' yeast. An inhibiting factor in the adoption of brewers' yeast was its availability: it could not survive extremes of heat, and not all communities had alcohol on the bubble week in, week out. There are countless recipes in English recipe books for making a barm, indication that it was not always to be found.
The first breads would have been cooked on flat stones heated directly in the fire. The bakestone remained the preferred method of cooking flat or unleavened breads in many cultures, from Mexico to Scotland, and is still in use. However, a natural step to take was to cover the bakestone with an inverted pot to contain the heat, and then to turn this makeshift arrangement into a domed, igloo-shaped or beehive, oven. A free-standing structure of this sort, with its own source of heat, merely replicates on a larger scale the principle of the stone and pot. Early examples have been found in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Balkans.
The conventional account of the development of these ovens has them first appearing in Egypt. However, archaeologists working in the Balkans have unearthed models of near-conical (igloo-shaped) clay bread ovens dating from the middle of the 5th millennium bc, and a site in Bulgaria has yielded a clay model of a loaf carbon-dated to c.5100 bc. The pattern of finds would indicate that these ovens were not known south of Macedonia—in Crete, for instance, there are none dating from before c.1500 bc—and the loaf model is of leavened bread, not an unleavened disc. These facts hint at the possibility that bread was first developed in C. Asia and came to the Mediterranean by both a southern (Mesopotamian and Egyptian) and a northern (Balkan) route.
The beehive oven is heated by burning a fire on its floor. When the fire has heated the structure, it is raked out and the risen dough put in its place. The doorway is sealed, and the bread cooks in a falling heat radiating from every surface, the oven space capturing and recycling any moisture that evaporates from the loaves. (See also tandoor for a somewhat similar oven of the Near East and Asia.)
The technical development of ovens did not quicken pace until the 18th century when improvements in design allowed the more efficient retention, or even introduction, of moisture—hence the crackling thin crusts of Viennese and, eventually, Parisian loaves—and led to methods of remote heating rather than burning fuel on the oven sole. This facilitated more continuous production, as the oven did not have to be prepared and cleaned between each firing, and permitted ovens of greater size: more usually with a flat arched roof than a dome.
During the 19th century, there were many experiments in conveying heat, just as other materials than brick, clay, or stone, particularly steel, were tried for the oven's construction. Superheated steam, pipes filled with oil, oil burners, gas jets, and, latterly, electricity replaced wood and coal. Equally, there have been many improvements in the delivery of bread to the oven itself over the deft manipulation of a loaf on a baker's peel. The fullest expression of this is the travelling oven, where the goods to be baked moved through a heated space, going in cold and emerging fully baked.
Although ovens can be built any size, there are advantages of time and function in having them fairly large. The same may be said of mills. Hence bread-baking has often been a communal activity to avoid duplication of expensive resources. Grain is ground at the village mill, often in Europe in the hands of the political master; dough is baked in a communal oven, owned either by the lord or the community, or in the hands of a tradesman who gains his living therefrom. In feudal Europe, bread seemed a gastronomic expression of the social order. In modern France and Switzerland, there are still examples of communal ovens, though few now work. In Greece and the Near East, the village baker cooked bread fashioned in the homes of his customers, as well as baking joints of meat after the first heat had gone off, just as did his professional equivalents in societies where ovens were at a premium. In Quebec, too, the oven was a community venture.
Small hand mills have always been used among pioneer societies, or in scattered settlements, and small ovens were built, for instance in the fireplaces of farmhouses, especially where they were isolated from near neighbours. There was a trade in the construction of small earthenware ‘cloam’ ovens from 17th-century N. Devon potteries, exported to colonists in N. America as well as remote farms of SW England. Otherwise, the mass of people had to wait for the development of the cast iron kitchen range to have an oven on site and ready.
The nature of bread production—that it should usually be on a larger scale than that of other foods—also gave rise to its early organization into a professional trade. Full-time bakers are identifiable from the records of ancient Egypt; the 5th-century bc Greek author Archestratus refers to Lydian, Phoenician, and Cappadocian bakers; in Rome there was a bakers' guild from approximately 150 bc; in 12th-century London and Paris bakers' guilds were among the earliest craft brotherhoods. The complexity of production also led to sectional groupings: millers were, of course, distinct, but bakers in 14th-century London were divided between those who made white bread and brown, and the town governments of Provence at the same period distinguished between bakers and oven-keepers.
Professional organization, as well as the importance of the food itself, determined the nature of government controls over bread—an early candidate for every form of interference in most western societies, whether to ensure honest retailing, satisfactory ingredients, or acceptable prices. Langland's ‘Bakers and brewers, bouchers and cokes—For thees men doth most harme to the mene puple’ only needs to add millers to the list to complete the gallery of poor men's rogues.
It could be said that the early history of bread was dominated by efforts to ensure its distribution to as many people as necessary to avoid civil unrest, or to control its distribution to the advantage of the rulers over the ruled. In contrast, the history of bread since the Industrial Revolution has been driven by technological change and its consequences. This shift was mirrored by the change in the nature of government controls. At first, as indicated above, they were preoccupied with price, fair dealing, and the nature of trade. Latterly they have centred on improvements either to replace constituents removed by the technical processes of milling and baking, or actually adding nutrients to the benefit of the consumer, or controlling the manipulation of the raw material first suggested by technical imperatives—for example which chemicals should be allowed to accelerate the ageing of flour.
Technical changes have come about through greater understanding of how bread is made, and through the replacement of human effort by machines. The effect of roller milling (already mentioned) was matched by the mechanization of kneading, which took hold in most of Europe and America in the last quarter of the 19th century (though there had been simple mechanical aids even in ancient Rome, and 17th-century man was familiar with the dough-breaker) and improved the baker's lot immeasurably. Taken together, these permitted large-scale production of white bread from the newly developed cornlands of N. America (which offered harder wheat than before experienced) and the creation of veritable bread factories. Subsequent change has been to improve industrial efficiency, to reduce the amount of time taken in production, and to exercise control over raw materials to obtain consistency. The outcome has been the plant bakery operating some form of accelerated dough development through high-speed mixing, dependent on chemical treatments to flours to maximize performance, and normally adding a cocktail of chemicals called ‘improvers’ (not in themselves harmful) to the dough. The result has been less individualistic and less characterful, less tasty in short, and so successful that the same measures have been adopted even by small-scale producers.
The history of bread in particular countries is touched on in the section on bread varieties below, or specific entries (barley breads, rolls, muffins, etc.), but the general tendencies are clear.
Although many grains have contributed to a variety of breads, depending on geography, climate, and agricultural development, wheat has been pre-eminent. Its gluten content ensures a lighter, more appetizing texture. With few exceptions, a light and refined loaf has been viewed as a better loaf. Wherever a distinction has been drawn between bread for the rich and bread for the poor, the poor get the heavier, browner loaf.
Some countries have retained a taste for rye, especially in N. and E. Europe, and for the lactic fermentation or sourdough that gives rye bread more even texture and better balance of flavours. Few countries where wheat is readily or cheaply obtainable, however, have continued to depend on the lesser bread grains such as barley, oats, or millet, and even less on bean or chestnut flour, which once were staples in times of dearth or areas of poverty.
Exceptions to this rule have arisen when bread is the subject of considerations other than appetite or preference. No foodstuff bears greater moral and philosophical burden. Since ancient Greece, certain types have been seen as health giving, and by extension, bestowing some sort of moral worth on the consumer. Dr Thomas Muffat advocated eating brown bread in Health's Improvement (1595) and such arguments reached their most extreme with the views of the American Dr Sylvester Graham, whose name was adopted by the French to signify wholemeal bread. In the 20th century, further work emphasized the importance of bran to human digestion, adding a new element to the debate already raging about the respective advantages and disadvantages of white and wholemeal bread (the former had no nutritional capacity, said some, while others accused the latter of inhibiting calcium take-up).
Part of the background to this bubbling pot of controversy was undoubtedly the aftermath of exposures of adulteration of white flour with substances such as chalk dust and alum in 18th- and 19th-century England. Was the whitest of breads the purest or was it the most suspect? This sort of problem, plus the developments just mentioned, resulted in temporary reversals, especially among the better off, of the general trend towards light, white breads made with harder flours.
In countries where wheat or grains suitable for bread-making were not grown, other crops formed the dietary staple. In Japan, it was rice, though much barley was grown, and bread was only familiar in treaty ports where western trading ships were allowed. However, a series of rice famines in the 19th century led the Japanese to take bread more seriously. By the early 20th century it was common, and made by professional bakers. The usual product was dryish, sweetened, and cakelike. Nowadays, mass-produced western bread has made inroads on the original kinds.
Indian bread varieties are influenced by the availability and cost of the various cereals, wheat being common in the north but expensive, and by the fact that only the more prosperous households have had ovens. The medium-sized clay tandoor oven produces nan, a crisper and bubblier relative of pitta bread, but most Indian breads are cooked on bakestones and are more in the nature of pancakes. Leavening is often provided by palm yeast, obtained by the spontaneous fermentation of palm sap as it turns into toddy.
In China wheat has long been grown in the north, though always a comparative luxury, the poor having to make do with millet and other grains. Barley is also grown. The Chinese adopted the rotary mill driven by animals after it had reached them from the Persians. Watermills and windmills were known by the Chinese but not harnessed to grinding corn. The Chinese were also ignorant of the bread oven; so their bread, like that of the Newari people of Nepal, was made by steaming, or the flour was converted to some form of flat pasta.
See also tortilla; tamales; and some items in corn breads and barley bread.
The archetypal bread is made of wheat flour, water, and yeast, which are allowed to ferment together, shaped, and then baked in an oven. However, as bread is such a widespread and ancient food innumerable variations have developed.
Some interesting and important breads or near-breads are treated separately: baba; bagel; bannock; barley breads; brioche; bruschetta; choerek; corn breads; croissant; Danish pastry; doughnut; farl; French bread; gingerbread; griddle breads; kugelhopf; muffin; oatcake; panettone; pitta; pretzel; pumpernickel; rye bread; soda bread; sourdough; Stollen; tea breads.
Other breads or groups of breads include the following:
Ashcake, any kind of bread cooked in the ashes of a fire, particularly an American corn bread.
Biscuit. Historically this word was applied to soft enriched breads baked in Guernsey and NE Scotland.
Bloomer, English name for a long loaf with rounded ends, slashed diagonally in evenly spaced deepish cuts just before baking. The shape is common to most European countries (it is known in France as bâtard). Now made from an ordinary white bread dough, bloomer loaves were formerly made from a high-grade flour, enriched with milk, butter, or lard. The origin of the name is obscure. One possible explanation is that the loaf ‘blooms’ or rises in the oven, rather than being confined in a mould; another that the shape resembles a thick bar or ‘bloom’ of iron as made in medieval iron foundries or ‘bloomeries’.
Boston brown bread, a traditional American bread made from mixed grains, usually a blend of rye and wheat flour with cornmeal, buttermilk, and molasses. Raised with bicarbonate of soda, the mixture is placed in a tall cylindrical mould and steamed, not dry baked in the normal way. The Puritan community in New England served this bread on the Sabbath with Boston baked beans.
Brown bread, a general term still used in England, denoting anything from a loaf made from wholemeal flour to one made from white flour with a little fibre and possibly some caramel colouring added.
Ciabatta. This Italian word means ‘old slipper/shoe’, an apt description for the baggy, rough oval shape of these loaves. They are characterized by large holes in the crumb, and a distinctive, slightly sour flavour. The irregular shape comes from the use of a very wet dough, which in turn allows large bubbles to form in the loaf. The flavour is derived partly from olive oil and malt, and hints at the use of a sourdough starter.
Coburg/cob, a popular English crusty loaf, made from plain white dough. Round in shape, the crust may be cut in a number of ways. A cross gives the loaf four distinct corners, which, on a pan-baked loaf, rise into a spectacular top or ‘cauliflower’. With one spreading cut, it is called ‘Danish’ by some bakers, and with a chequerboard pattern of little cuts, exposing more surface to brown, it becomes a crusty loaf, a porcupine, or, according to Eliza Acton, a college loaf. Or it may be ‘docked’, punctured with small holes by a special utensil consisting of formidable spikes set in a rounded piece of wood.
The docked loaf, and a round loaf with a plain, uncut crust, may be known as a cob, which is not an abbreviation of Coburg, but an old word for head. Cob loaves were formerly small, round, and baked from coarse flour. The name ‘Coburg’ only came into use in the 19th century, possibly introduced by German bakers who settled in London.
Cornish splits, small round cakes made of plain white dough, split and eaten hot with butter, or cream and jam or treacle.
Cottage loaf. This is actually two round loaves of ordinary bread dough baked one on top of the other, the top one always being smaller than the bottom one. Assembling the two to give the correct shape requires practice and fine judgement of the texture of the dough. It is now rare, although it was formerly very common in England. The shape is also known in France, where the brioche is a richer and more elegant version of the same idea; and pain chapeau of Finisterre looks like an English cottage loaf. Elizabeth David (1977) suggests that the shape may have evolved from joining two loaves together to economize on floor space in old-fashioned brick ovens.
Crackling bread, see crackling.
Crispbread, flat, unleavened bread from Scandinavia, commonly made from rye flour and distinctly crisp after it has been dried out. It can be stored for a long time. In the Scandinavian countries it bears names such as knäckerbröd.
Damper, Australian term for unleavened bread which is cooked in ashes or a Dutch oven.
Farmhouse, an English loaf shape, a short, thick, rounded oblong, often with the word ‘farmhouse’ impressed on the sides. Now made of ordinary white dough, it meant a loaf baked from brown wheatmeal (wholewheat) dough in the 19th century. The name is a conscious appeal to the supposed ‘goodness’ of the rustic loaf as baked in the country.
Flatbreads, any bread made into a thin cake before baking, or, more usually, cooking on a griddle. Different grains are responsible for the wide variety. Many are unleavened, such as Scandinavian crisp bread, Mexican tortilla, Jewish matzo, and British oatcake; others, such as Indian nan, are raised with yeast. The world of flatbreads has been thoroughly explored by the intrepid authors Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid (1995).
Granary, a British type of bread, which takes its name from a specific type of flour composed of mixed brown wheat and rye with malted, cracked wheat grains. The resulting loaves, usually in a round or oval shape, have a soft, sweetish, slightly sticky crumb.
Grissini, Italian crisp bread sticks made from plain dough, placed on the table as a ‘nibble’ in restaurants. German Salzstange (see below) are a more elaborate version of the same idea.
Graham bread, originally the very coarse wholemeal bread advocated by the early 19th-century American food reformer and self-styled physician the Revd Sylvester Graham. Now widely applied to any wholemeal product.
Harvest loaf, a special loaf made for harvest thanksgiving, in which the dough has been modelled into a wheatsheaf shape. Ordinary white bread dough can be used if the loaf is intended to be eaten. If it is purely decorative, recipes call for large amounts of salt which control the amount by which the bread rises, giving a sharper sculpture and acting as a preservative.
Hovis, loaves baked from a proprietary flour to which concentrated wheatgerm has been added.
Manchet, a soft, fine white bread, often enriched, made for the noble and wealthy people in England during the medieval period and beyond (see Elizabeth David, 1977, for interesting historical details).
Maslin bread, of historic interest, was made from maslin, a mixture of rye and wheat, from medieval times until (in some places) the 18th century. The rye made it fairly dense, but it had a good flavour.
Milk bread. As the name suggests, the dough for this is mixed with milk instead of water (a little butter can be added too). It makes a loaf with a closer texture and softer crust than water.
Plaits. Bread is often made more special by dividing up the dough, making each piece into a rope, and plaiting the pieces together. This is the standard shape for some loaves, notably the challah. Intricately plaited loaves of up to eight strands (in German, Zopf) or plaits shaped into hearts, stars, clover leaves, and butterflies are made for special occasions, especially in C. Europe.
Potato bread. Mashed potato was sometimes used to replace some flour when grain was scarce, or as an economy measure in poor households. Carefully handled, in a proportion of about four parts flour to one of potato, it can give a very good result, which keeps and toasts well and is now liked for its own sake. Mashed potato, added to leaven, encourages fermentation.
Pugliese, a soft Italian white bread, enriched with olive oil.
Pulled bread, the crumb of a white loaf, ‘pulled’ apart into chunks and dried in the oven.
Salt stick (German: Salzstange), thin, crisp, usually leavened bread stick covered in salt, used as a snack. They are made in several countries, especially in C. Europe, where they are often sold with beer in beer halls, since they stimulate thirst.
Stotty cake, not a cake but a flat round loaf which is a speciality of NE England (e.g. Durham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne).
Vienna, British term for a glazed, bright golden, crusty white loaf cooked with the aid of steam in the oven to give a very light texture. It is usually baked in a pointed oval shape, which is slashed the entire length. A similar method is used for making French bread such as baguettes. See also viennoiserie.
Wholemeal (French: pain intégrale or pain complet; German: Schrotbrot), bread made from flour which has been ground from the entire grain, including all the bran and germ, with no additives. The dough does not rise as high as white bread dough, because the bran particles in the flour cut the gluten strands. Wholemeal bread has become increasingly fashionable in many western countries since the 1960s. Claims for the health-giving properties of wheatgerm and bran have had a lot to do with this.
This section seeks to explain how ‘bread represents the culinary domestication of grain, an achievement that made it possible to extract pleasure as well as nourishment from the hard, bland seeds’ (McGee, 1984).
Any cereal flour consists mainly of starch and proteins. Wheat flour contains five groups of proteins, classed as albumin, globulin, proteoses, glutenin, and gliadin. When flour is wetted, the first three, being soluble, disperse, leaving glutenin and gliadin. It is these, which wheat has in greater quantity than any other cereal, which form gluten. Kneading the dough draws out the glutenin, whose long, thin, chainlike molecules form strands, while the shorter molecules of gliadin create bridges between them. As the network of strands develops, it absorbs water, resulting in that familiar change in the texture of dough from a shaggy mass of short chains and imperfectly absorbed liquid, through a certain stickiness, to a smooth, plastic, and elastic substance. Rye flour, which contains little gluten and some natural gums, remains sticky and makes a denser loaf. Barley has very little gluten indeed.
The amount of gluten-forming protein in wheat varies according to breed and circumstances of growth. The greatest, contributing to the lightest breads with the greatest volume, is found in wheats grown in a single short summer season, particularly from the prairies of N. America. They are known as ‘hard’ wheats and may contain 13–14% protein. Before there was large-scale export of N. American grain, hard wheats were obtained especially from Hungary and the plains of C. Europe. Other European wheats tended to be ‘softer’, running from 7 to 11% protein, and best suited for ‘shorter’ products such as cake and pastry, though they lent character, even greater flavour, to traditional breads. As Europe has tended to greater agricultural self-sufficiency, so has there been much effort directed towards increasing the protein content of indigenous, winter-sown wheats.
The performance of gluten is affected by the age of flour: maturity causes beneficial chemical changes to the glutenin. The effect of time can be replicated by oxidants introduced after milling, though some have been banned from commercial use. Vitamin C or ascorbic acid, one of the permitted additives, has the same effect.
Other substances have important consequences on the performance of gluten in a bread dough. Salt may inhibit yeast activity, just as it makes gluten less extensible, but it also reduces the action of protein-digesting enzymes in flour which, if left unchecked, could damage the gluten far more than a little salt. This is why an orthodox bread dough, if unsalted, is often denser than a properly seasoned mixture.
Fats, for instance butter, lard, oil, or liquids such as milk, also have a contradictory effect. Too much, the gluten will be broken up and will not form the long strands necessary for maximum expansion; just enough, approximately 3% of the total weight of a dough, and they appear to reinforce the contribution of natural lipids in wheat to make gluten more stretchy. Fats also have a tenderizing effect. In part this is due to their assault on long strands of gluten—the longer and more elastic they are, the ‘tougher’ will be the bread; and by coating the starch granules, fats delay the release of moisture, keeping bread apparently fresher. Finally, when much butter or lard is added to enriched doughs, by coating the flour particles, it protects them from the action of the yeast. This is a reason many recipes call for a delay in adding fats until fermentation has begun.
The major component of flour, more than 70% of total weight, is starch, from the endosperm of the wheat grain. This affords the bulk of the loaf which is structured and supported by the framework of gluten. Starch also provides yeast with the sugars necessary for life and fast breeding. These come from granules damaged in the milling process which are vulnerable to the enzyme amylase, which is present in the flour and will eventually break down the starch into its constituent sugars. (The amylase is usually sufficient to invigorate modern yeasts, although in the past extra help was often needed; this was one reason for sugar or honey being a usual part of domestic bread recipes.) The sugars in starch, having fed the yeast, also contribute to the final texture and appearance of a loaf. Their caramelization (see caramel) gives colour to the crust.
The grain of wheat also consists of bran and germ. For white bread these are largely excluded from the flour, by sifting if it is stoneground, or by the very process itself if roller ground. The wheatgerm is high in natural fats and nutrients, as well as imparting flavour. When it is left in flours, for instance wholemeals, they tend to keep less well as the fats run the risk of going rancid. Hovis bread, a British brand, adds the wheatgerm back into the flour after its first exclusion in the milling process.
Bran also has its own flavour, and is enjoyed for its mechanical effect on the human body, which has some parallels with its performance in a bread dough. Bran particles are sharp and rough, though fine milling may reduce their effect—hence the greatest volume in a wholemeal loaf will usually be obtained from a fine flour. These cutting edges, which irritate the bowel, tend also to disturb the cell structure that builds up in a maturing dough as the carbon dioxide expands. The bran interrupts and punctures the thin cell walls.
Not all leavened breads use brewer's or distiller's yeast and the consequent alcoholic fermentation to obtain volume. Some depend on leaven, which is a lactic fermentation provoked by bacteria joined with a mild alcoholic fermentation from less vigorous strains of wild yeasts, though both methods have a single end: to introduce carbon dioxide into a dough which is capable of expansion yet resilient thanks to the gluten, and bulk and nutrition thanks to the starch. Other leavenings, for instance soda activated by soured milk, baking powder, or the simple introduction of carbonic gas (as once practised by the Aerated Bread Company), are often used for short doughs that do not develop gluten to the same extent.
Yeasts, but not baking powder, contribute flavour as well as the impetus to rise. This flavour is developed by the amount of fermentation rather than the absolute amount of yeast added at the beginning. Hence, a dough which is made over a number of hours, or even days, will start with a very small quantity of yeast, but will develop a stronger flavour than a short-time dough made with an initially large amount of yeast. In the case of a lactic fermentation that taste is more or less sour; hence the term sourdough. Dried yeast contains a higher level of waste products, which give it stronger flavour.
Yeasts need nutrients in order to multiply up to a number sufficient to do the work of fermentation. These are contained within the flour itself, though modern bakery techniques accelerate development by adding various improvers, often malt based. Fermentation occurs when the sucrose and maltose in the flour are acted upon by enzymes in the yeast to produce glucose and fructose, which are then converted to alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Yeast activity is also influenced by temperature. It cannot function at all over 56 °C (130 °F), when the cells die. It is perceptibly slowed if the figure drops below 21 °C (70 °F). It is moribund when frozen. Cold fermentations are feasible, even advantageous, for instance with Vienna bread (see bread varieties above). Dough can be developed in the refrigerator, but warmth is sensible for even and convenient fermentation. The optimum is between 24 °C (75 °F) and 27 °C (80 °F). The fermentation of natural leaven bread is more temperature sensitive than that raised with brewer's yeast. If it is too cold, the lactic fermentation will develop too much sourness, will be swamped by cold-tolerant bacteria that taste ‘off’, and the wild yeasts will not perform well.
It is not merely the ambient temperature that is important, for the baker is more interested in the heat of the dough itself. This is why he will adjust the temperature of the water or liquor at the outset of making a dough with a view to accelerating fermentation, slowing it down, or in reaction to the air temperature depending on the season of the year. His ideal is consistency, which is why draughts are to be avoided: so that one part of the dough (out of the draught) does not ferment more quickly than the part being chilled.
The first mixing of the dough is important to later stages because the baker must ensure even distribution of ingredients and even wetting of the flour. Hence yeast is often mixed in the water, and the first mixing is a comparatively rapid process. Pockets of flour that are not properly wetted will prove very difficult to eradicate at the later stage of kneading. Before the advent of mechanical mixers, the creation of a dough was nearly always in two stages. First a wet sponge was made with most of the liquor, the yeast and a portion of the flour. This was allowed to ferment, then the rest of the flour would be added. This alleviated the work of mixing great weights of flour at once, as well as economizing on yeast (by allowing it more time) and developing more flavour. In France this method is called sur poolish; it was also much favoured in Scotland.
After mixing, the dough is kneaded in order to develop the gluten to its maximum. The harder the wheat the more kneading is required. The dough is then left to rise until approximately doubled in size. It is covered so that a skin will not form where it comes into contact with the air. The rising further conditions the gluten as well as allowing the yeast to ferment. This stage has been accelerated in modern commercial baking by high-speed mechanical mixing: the Chorleywood Process. The gluten is conditioned by the mixer and large quantities of high-active yeast are used to obtain rapid fermentation.
Once risen, the dough is knocked back to its original size, thus evening out the distribution of yeast and gas bubbles, then moulded into loaves. The ensuing second rise or ‘proof’, also under cover or in humidified and heated proving cabinets, doubles the bulk once more. It is never the intention that the loaves should rise to their maximum during proof. A final expansion is reserved for the oven. If they do rise as far as they can before exposure to heat, they will probably collapse in the oven.
Baking is the final process in making bread. It needs a very hot oven to give it an initial fierce heat, after which the temperature can be allowed to fall gradually. This was the principle of a wood-fired brick or stone oven heated with a fire which was raked out just before the bread was put in. The intention of all bread-baking is to strike heat into the centre of the bread as quickly as possible, from as many angles as possible. A brick oven, which radiates from the floor, sides, and roof (and which retains heat far better than the thin metal walls of modern domestic ovens), is ideal. The heat needs rapid conveyance so that the yeast can be killed before it causes too much expansion and so that the outside of the loaf can be set so as to avoid any semblance of collapse or sagging. A 1 kg (2 lb) loaf will need 20 minutes at 500 °F (260 °C) before its centre reaches 130 °F (54 °C). Chinese steamed rolls, which are cooked on a quite different principle, gain their heat shock from the great latent heat in steam, many times that of boiling water, which is released when it condenses on a cold surface like dough.
When the raw bread is first exposed to the heat, the yeast is goaded into a last furious burst of activity. When the water in the dough boils (at a temperature slightly above normal boiling point, because of the presence of salts, sugars, and other dissolved materials in the dough), steam continues to expand the loaf. The direction of the ‘spring’ is usually influenced by the baker slashing the top of the loaf in a particular way before he sets it in the oven.
Expansion is stopped by the formation of a rigid crust. This can be delayed by making steam in the oven, keeping the outside soft for longer. Traditional bread ovens are hermetically sealed, thus allowing recirculation of steam during the baking process, and ovens developed by Viennese bakers in the 18th century, later adopted by the French, were designed to optimize the benefits of steam to loaf expansion and crispness of the crust. Most commercial ovens now have means of introducing steam, which helps to gelatinize the surface starch and give a high-gloss finish. Domestic bakers can either put a tray of water in the bottom of the oven, or spray their loaves with water during the first minutes of baking.
From the outside in, first the crust then the crumb solidifies. From 140 °F (60 °C) the starch partly sets to a gel and the proteins coagulate at 160 °F (71 °C). When all expansion has stopped, the loaf continues to cook at a lower temperature. Coagulation becomes complete and water evaporates from inside the loaf (a cooked loaf will weigh 12% less than raw). The crust loses most water and turns brown as a result of reactions between proteins and sugars. The colour of the crust is important in determining the final taste of the loaf. Crust coatings such as egg wash or milk give good colour, but cause softness.
As soon as bread is cooked and has cooled (paradoxically, an important part of the cooking process), it begins to stale. This is caused by a breakdown in the gel structure called ‘retrogradation’, in which the network of starch molecules subsides and shrivels. It is not so much a simple loss of water, but ‘a change in the location and distribution of the water molecules’ (McGee, 1984). Much of the water migrates to the crust, which gets leathery. Slight retrogradation is desirable: it improves the cutting texture of the loaf, especially in rye breads. Staling is accelerated by refrigeration, stopped by freezing, and slowed by keeping at room temperature. It can be temporarily reversed by reheating. Emulsifiers are added by commercial bakers to delay staling.
This is an extensive subject that E. S. Dallas (1877) thought the English well equipped to address: ‘the best bread for cooking purposes is known in the French kitchen as pain Anglais—it is the English pan loaf.’
Bread may be used as crumbs, dried or soft; entire, as either a loaf or a slice; or as small pieces cut off a larger slice.
When breadcrumbs are dried, they may consist of the raspings of a crust. When bread was baked in ovens with only approximate temperature controls, or was cooked over very long periods of time, it often had crusts that were too hard, or too thick and tough. A bread rasp, therefore, to thin or remove the crust, was essential kitchen equipment. ‘French’ breads in English 18th-century recipes were invariably rasped. More refined dried crumbs are made with crustless slices dried out in the oven before pounding. Hard crumbs obtained in these ways could be used to coat foods for frying, as in ‘egged and crumbed’, or spread on a dish before browning under a grill or in a hot oven. The gratin crust benefits from absorption of the juices from below and fats such as butter or cheese placed on top by the cook.
Soft breadcrumbs are the crumb of the bread, slightly staled, then grated or processed into small particles. They may also be used to coat foods before frying (lighter and less fat-absorbing than dried crumbs) or to form a crust to gratins, but most important has been their function as thickening agent to many sauces and soups, and to give bulk to a panada or a stuffing. Bread, either cut into small pieces or made into crumbs, was the most common thickening agent in medieval European cookery, ground almonds running second, as a flour-based roux is a comparatively complex development. Bread sauce is a modern descendant in Britain, but there are more survivors in countries like Spain where medieval cookery has been less overlaid by classical French inventions; hence the dish of liver called chainfaïna which is finished with a handful of crumbs to bind the juice, and many other examples. There is a group of Mediterranean cold sauces—sauce rouille, some versions of aiöli, skorthalia, and the Genoese sauce for Cappon magro—where the bread helps the emulsification of the oil, while the Levantine tarator is a combination of nuts and breadcrumbs moistened with lemon juice or broth, and taramosalata gains softness and lightness from crumbs.
Crumbs are also used to thicken soups—both red and white gazpachos in Spain, for example, or the simple bread soups of the Italian countryside, with the Panada di Milano, an egg- and Parmesan-enriched soup like stracciatella, at the pinnacle of elaboration. Panzanella is a Tuscan salad of bread soaked in water, tomato and salad vegetables, basil, and olive oil. The likely derivation of the name, from pan (bread) and zanella (little soup tureen), seems to imply that it, too, began life as a bread-thickened soup. An alternative method of combination is to place slices in a bowl and pour the soup onto them. Equally, the bread may be floated on top of the soup, laden with cheese, and browned under a grill, as in French onion soup.
In German lands, particularly Bavaria where bakers even sell Knödel-loaves, bread is used to make dumplings (Knödel). Stale crusty breakfast rolls are sliced and soaked in milk, mixed with eggs and flavourings, moulded without kneading, then poached. Dumplings can be sliced and fried afterwards, and may themselves be served with fried breadcrumbs as a garnish.
Crumbs are added to recipes to give them body. Hence the whole family of meat and poultry stuffings, and the incorporation of crumbs into many steamed pudding mixtures. Crumbs are also added to sausage, hamburger, and meat loaf mixtures, often to extend the meat content, but also to absorb fat and lighten the whole.
Slices of bread may be cut into smaller shapes and fried or toasted to produce croutons (‘little crusts’). Cubes of bread thus treated are added to soups at the table; larger shapes are served with stews or sauced meats. In England they were called sippets. Croutons are added to salads to give body, taste, and texture. Caesar salad is one instance, but in the Middle East, fattoush is also a mixed salad with toasted pitta bread broken into it.
If bread is hollowed out, it can be used as a container as well as absorbing the juices from whatever is placed within, be it oysters or some more elaborate stew, but a more common method is to use a whole slice of bread, or a pair of them, for supper dishes, often involving cheese, like croque-monsieur, Mozzarella in carossa, or Welsh rabbit. The oldest was a popular titbit called pain perdu (lost bread) in the Middle Ages, where a slice of bread was soaked in cream and eggs, honey and spices, then fried. Elaborations of the theme are practised in Italy on toasts called bruschetta, and the Catalan Pa amb tomaquèt is toast rubbed with ripe tomato and drizzled with olive oil, so popular that a book, Teoria i práctica del pa am tomaquèt, was written on the subject.
See also bread puddings.
Tom Jaine is an independent writer and publisher, specializing in food and food history. He is the author of numerous books, including Cooking in the Country, Making Bread at Home, and Traditional Country House Cooking. He sometimes writes for The Guardian and other publications. He was editor of The Good Food Guide from 1989 to 1994, has presented ‘The Food Programme’ on Radio 4, and has participated in discussions of food on radio and television. (TJ)
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